Read Between the Lines for Free Online

over leggings that seem like they’ve been hacked with a razor. She looks like a corpse bride. “Where’d yougo last night?” she says. “I sent you a thousand texts.”
    I hesitate. I’ve hidden my fairy-tale obsession from Jules, but if anyone is going to believe me when I say that a book changed before my eyes, it’s going to be my best friend.
    “Sorry,” I say. “I went to bed early.”
    “Well, the texts were all about Soy Boy.”
    I blush. At 3:00 A.M. during our last sleepover, I confessed to her that I thought Zach from my Earth Science class was possible future boyfriend material.
    “I heard that he hooked up with Mallory Wegman last weekend.”
    Mallory Wegman had hooked up with so many guys in our class that her nickname was the Fisherman. I let this news sink in, and the fact that I had thought about Zach this morning before reading my book, which seemed a thousand years ago.
    “He’s telling everyone she slipped him a real burger instead of a veggie one and it overloaded his system. That he has no recollection of doing anything with her.”
    “Must have been some really good beef,” I murmur. For a second, I try to mourn Zach, my potential crush, who now has someone real, but all I’m thinking of is Oliver.
    “I have to tell you something,” I confess.
    Jules looks at me, suddenly serious.
    “I was reading this book and it… it sort of changed.”
    “I totally understand,” Jules says. “The first time I saw Attack of the Killer Tomatoes I knew my life was never going to be the same.”
    “No, it’s not that I’ve changed—it’s the book that changed.” I reach into my backpack and grab the fairy tale, flipping directly to the last page. “Look.”
    Prince? Yup, standing right where he usually is.
    Princess? Ditto.
    Frump? Wagging happily.
    Chessboard?
    It’s missing.
    It was there less than a half hour ago, and suddenly it’s gone.
    “Delilah?” Jules asks. “Are you okay?”
    I can feel myself breaking out in a cold sweat. I close the book and then open it again; I blink fast to clear my eyes.
    Nothing.
    I stuff the book into my backpack again and close my locker. “I, um, have to go,” I say to Jules, shoving past her as the bell rings.
    Just so you know, I never lie. I never steal. I never cut class. I am, in short, the perfect student.
    Which makes what I am about to do even more shocking. I turn in the opposite direction and walk toward the gymnasium, although I am supposed to be in homeroom.
    Me, Delilah McPhee.
    “Delilah?” I look up to see the principal standing in front of me. “Shouldn’t you be in homeroom?”
    He smiles at me. He doesn’t expect me to be cutting class either.
    “Um… Ms. Winx asked me to get a book from the gym teacher.”
    “Oh,” the principal says. “Excellent!” He waves me on.
    For a moment I just stare at him. Is it really this easy to become someone I’m not? Then I break into a run.
    I don’t stop until I have reached the locker room. I know it will be empty this early in the morning. Sitting down on a bench, I take the book from my backpack and open it again.
    Real fairy tales are not for the fainthearted. In them, children get eaten by witches and chased by wolves; women fall into comas and are tortured by evil relatives. Somehow, all that pain and suffering is worthwhile, though, when it leads to the ending: happily ever after. Suddenly it no longer matters if you got a B– on your midterm in French or if you’re the only girl in the school who doesn’t have a date for the spring formal. Happily ever after trumps everything. But what if ever after could change?
    It did for my mom. At one point, she loved my dad, or they wouldn’t have gotten married—but now she doesn’t even want to speak to him when he calls me on my birthday and Christmas. Likewise, maybe the fairy tale isn’taccurate. Maybe the last line should read something like What you see isn’t always what you get.
    There is still no chessboard on the